A Grade I-listed wall around a 12-century churchyard is being lowered after it was repeatedly hit by HGVs.

But residents, who are calling for the route to be reclassified as a B-road to stop lorries from damaging their village, say it is a “tragedy” that the needs of traffic are being given priority over the area’s heritage.

The wall at St Mary The Virgin in Goudhurst borders a tight bend on the A262.

Over the years, the wall, which is believed to date from 1768, has been repeatedly struck by the trailers of articulated lorries as they swing around the bend.

Fed up with the continual damage, the diocese has come up with a new design for the wall to be rebuilt to a lower level, which hopefully will enable the trailers to swing overhead, without causing further damage.

Churchwarden Jo Alsop said: “It’s taken about three-and-a-half years to get all the consents - though we did have the Covid lockdown during that time.

“The height will be dropped by about half a metre over a small section of the wall (eight metres).”

The work is expected to be completed shortly.

The church had considered several options, one of which was to reposition the wall within the churchyard. That was ruled out as it would have meant digging up some graves.

The current scheme does not plan for any graves to be disturbed, although it is acknowledged some burials may be undocumented.

Ms Alsop said: “If any human remains are unearthed, they will later be reinterred with our prayers.”

In the meantime, traffic around the bend is being controlled by temporary traffic lights, which is causing long delays and leading to much frustration.

Sarah Power lives on the opposite side of the bend.

She said: ”From where I sit in my study, I can hear the angry voices of drivers swearing at each other.”

Her house, which is Grade II-listed and dates from 1540, has also been struck on numerous occasions.

She said: “Lowering the wall might help the church, but it will not help us or solve the problem for the village.

“You can see the past repairs to our house. And we suffer constant vibrations when the HGVs go past which is cracking our plaster and weakening our chimneys.

“Sometimes, an HGV bursts its tyre on the bollard as it goes around the corner and then there’s an explosion. The blast has destroyed my garden plants in the past.

“It’s a tragedy that the needs of traffic are being given priority over England’s heritage.”

Goudhurst parish councillor Craig Broom said in 2018, the parish council had engaged a consultant to produce a report in the hope of persuading Kent County Council (KCC), the highways authority, to declassify the A262 to a B-road, so restrictions on vehicle size and weight could be put in place - something not allowed on A-roads.

But Cllr Broom said: “KCC said it couldn’t do so, because they had no alternative route to specify.”

Kevin Rampling is the chairman of Traffic Action Group A262.

The group comprises 200 villagers from Goudhurst, Sissinghurst and Biddenden, who all experience the same problem.

Mr Rampling, from Three Chimneys near Sissinghurst, said: “The problem in Goudhurst is that HGVs have to take a big sweep to get around the tight bend, and they have to commit to that before they can see whether anything is coming the other way.

“The consequence is that cars coming round the bend are often confronted with an HGV on their side of the road.

“When two HGVs coming in opposite directions meet, of course the situation is worse.

“Someone has to back-up down the busy High Street, and persuade the cars then queued up behind them to back up too!”

“That can easily take half an hour, during which time the road is blocked.

“There’s an exactly similar bend in Biddenden, where about six weeks ago, a car actually drove underneath the trailer of an HGV. Fortunately, the driver wasn’t seriously hurt.

“In Biddenden, it’s not the church wall, but the Grade I-listed pavements that keep getting broken as lorries ride over them.

“We know this problem is not unique to our villages, it happens all over Kent.

“It’s been happening in Goudhurst for at least 30 years, but with the government last year allowing the maximum length of lorries on our roads to increase by 2m, and with the growing population and extra traffic, the problem will just get worse.”

Mr Rampling said: ”The A262 is not just used by HGVs delivering locally.

“Goudhurst residents have noticed that the number of continental lorries going through the village increases on a Thursday, indicating that these are lorries trying to return to Europe through Dover or the Channel Tunnel before the weekend.

“Of course, whenever there is a problem on the M20 or M2, the situation gets worse as drivers seek alternative routes.”

He said: “What we need is for KCC to take strategic control of this. They need to specify which routes in Kent can take HGVs and which can’t.

“It would be wonderful to unite Kent villages to pressure KCC for a sensible solution.”

The Traffic Action Group A262 website can be found here.

A KCC spokesman said: "KCC, like other highway authorities, does not have a programme of declassifying the road network and it is important that every location has to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

"Any restriction which stops traffic from using the A262 will lead to vehicles using far less suitable roads on Kent's and East Sussex’s road network.”